


even in the smallest places

by thelostcolony



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Ben and Anna run a B&B together in Colonial Williamsburg, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Past Relationship(s), selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 20:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14528538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelostcolony/pseuds/thelostcolony
Summary: Anna and Ben run a bed and breakfast.It’s just as boring as it sounds.





	even in the smallest places

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone !! So I wrote this in two days instead of studying for finals for @majorxbennyxboy on tumblr, who originally came up with the adorable idea of Ben and Anna running a bed and breakfast together. This was supposed to be lighthearted, but obviously I... can't do that.
> 
> PLEASE mind these warnings: there are no graphic depictions of abuse in this work of fanfiction, but it is heavily implied and referenced. Key phrases are used throughout this fic regarding marital abuse and abuse in the workplace; please mind your mental health. Ben is selectively mute and has trouble with a stutter; as this is my first time writing a stutter, I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies and am very open to constructive criticism. Anna struggles with depression, and though it is only depicted for a short moment here it is poignant. Ben has panic attacks, though they're only referenced.
> 
> The titles of both the fic and the series are taken from a Noah Gundersen song called 'Garden'. I highly suggest a listen.
> 
> In advance, I hope you enjoy this, and please leave me a comment on your thoughts!

 

Ben wakes up with the sun, because usually their guests don’t.

He throws back the covers, goes about his morning routine. By the time he makes it down the stairs, Anna has already started on breakfast, hair pulled back into her bun and her apron firmly in place to ward off any stray pops of grease from the bacon on the stove. She raises an eyebrow at him when he hovers by her elbow and begins to crack eggs for an omelet.

“You only make omelets after rough nights,” she says, and he snorts and doesn’t comment on her astuteness. “Gonna spill the beans, Ben, or am I gonna have to wait until after coffee?”

Coffee sounds good, and just to be mean he hums noncommittally as he goes and puts up a cup for himself (Anna, true to form, made only enough for her own, because she believes that if she makes Ben’s coffee for him it’ll either be too domestic or he’ll get lazy. Both are true, but he’d really love a cup of premade coffee someday, if only because he’s barely coherent at the crack of dawn even _post_ shower). He takes a scalding sip just as their first guests make their way down the stairs, stumbling with sleepiness.

Anna scrapes the bacon and scrambled eggs onto a plate, flips the pancakes onto another, and places them on the counter for them to grab. As they drowsily take food and begin discussing their day plans, Ben finishes his coffee and sets about cleaning the pots and pans, scrubbing off grime before it can harden and has to soak in the sink. Anna perches across the kitchen from him, quiet and comfortable, and as the guests wave the both of them goodbye and shoulder through the front door she collects their plates and cups and wordlessly adds them to his pile.

Anna has always been good at knowing what he needs. She knows when to push and when to let him be, when to pry and when to let it go. There’s very little he isn’t willing to tell her in time---to date, she knows all his secrets and could likely guess the thoughts running through his head as they happen---but some things get stuck in his throat, get lodged there in a way only working with his hands and focusing too hard on a task can budge.

The dishes prove not to be enough, so he heads upstairs and makes the guests’ beds, and then when that isn’t enough he goes out to weed the garden best he can. His hands shake, but he’s steady as he rhythmically clears around the tomato plants, around the basil, around the carrots and strawberries. He concentrates so hard that by the time he’s done, he’s sweating in the nine o’clock sun and his hands ache and it’s finally easier to breathe.

When he retreats to the shade of the kitchen, Anna’s in the foyer welcoming more people, but she’s left him a glass of water with half melted ice in it.

He showers, then changes, and by the time he comes back downstairs all Anna’s doing is dusting and the guests have already left (checked in, dropped their bags, and split---the way a lot of people do when they come to Williamsburg. There’s a lot to see, and people generally don’t devote more than two or three days to it, so they pack it all in. Ben has yet to see the effectiveness of this strategy). She acknowledges him with a nod of her head; has taken that it’s a quiet day in stride.

And the day passes quietly. Ben putters around in the relative air conditioning (a heat wave for March), doing this and that. Anna handles anyone who walks through the door (only two sets of people, one of which is the couple that checked in earlier today) and Ben lingers in the background. He makes dinner for him and Anna, and she doesn’t say anything when it turns out to be grilled cheese and tomato soup---just thanks him even though their agreement is that she makes breakfast and he makes dinner.

The guests return fairly late; there are three groups, two couples and a mother with her two teenage children, and they’re quick to retire to their individual rooms. And it’s here, in this finally assured silence, that he can open his mouth.

Anna’s sitting at the kitchen counter, coffee in her hand. Ben puts up his own cup and fiddles with the machine even though there’s nothing in it yet. “It’s just dreams.”

She waits.

“It’s always---it’s---it’s---lots of the time the same,” he says, as he scoops his Chock Full O’ Nuts grains into the basket. “It’s---it’s just, it was my fault. It _was_ ,” he insists before she can say anything, “it was my fault, it---it--- _I didn’t do anything to stop it so_.” He stops and forces himself to take a deep breath and slow down, gritting his teeth against the curse that wants to escape. Anna doesn’t like when he curses.

He forces his hands steady. He forces himself to make the coffee. He forces himself to shake his head against the intrusive thoughts like he’s shaking an etch-a-sketch clear. He punches the brew button too hard; the machine’s beep sounds reprimanding.

He goes to bed without saying goodnight, but Anna doesn’t hold it against him.

She never does.

 

**X**

 

Ben wakes up with the sun, because usually Anna doesn’t.

He throws back the covers and goes about his morning routine. Brushes his teeth, shoves himself into the shower, scrubs his hair, his body, his face. He steps out, dries his body, blow dries his hair, gets dressed, presses his palms to his eyes until spots burst behind them from the pressure and distract from how wet they get.

He goes downstairs. Anna makes breakfast, except there’s more than two people to eat it this time, and they’re entertaining enough that by the time they leave he’s drained two cups of coffee. He’s feeling better than he did yesterday, and makes conversation with Anna, and cooks the two of them dinner. It’s hot despite the air conditioning, but that makes sense, considering it’s the summer.

And then before he knows it the summer bleeds into September; tourism slows a little when the school year starts up and picks up again around Labor Day. The bed and breakfast is full for the weekend at their seven rooms being used---four sets of families and three couples. They all seem charmed by the design of the house, and Ben defers compliments to Anna until she gives him a look and he just begins accepting them. He isn’t the master of the house, but he stops correcting people when they ask. Anna excuses herself a lot. He doesn’t chase her.

September fades into October with a splatter of changing leaves and cold weather. The great thing about the B&B --- _Tall and Strong Bed and Breakfast,_ renamed after he joined Anna a year ago (four point two stars on TripAdvisor, _free breakfast included!_ and _super sweet staff!_ their two biggest reviews)--- is how unchanging it is. Everything stays the same but for the guests and the contents of the garden because they’re always adding to it (they missed the season this year, but Anna wants cucumbers and Ben wants bell peppers, so the agenda is filled for when spring rolls around again). That’s something Ben needs. The routine is safe in a way he never thought he’d need, but there you have it.

He’s in the middle of doing the dishes one morning, a sweater pulled on against the chill (they don’t kick on the heat until they really need it, but October’s had a cold snap) when his phone rings.

“Tallboy!” Caleb cries from the other end in a way that never fails to make Ben smile. “How’s my favorite friend doin’?”  
  
“You mean how’s your  _only_ friend doing,” Ben says, phone crunched between his shoulder and his ear as he scrubs at a particularly stubborn pot.

“Ah,” Caleb says, “but see, here’s the thing, Benny: in being my only friend, it automatically makes you my favorite.”

“What do you want,” Ben says, and Caleb huffs.

“Can’t a man call his favorite---and _only-_ \--friend in the world just to chat?”

“Not unless he wants something.”

Caleb laughs from his belly, and warmth sparks in Ben’s own. He’s missed Caleb dearly, and it hits him the same way coming back from long trips does---you don’t miss your life until you’ve returned to it, and then all at once you realize how glad you are to be home. It’s warm and it hurts in the best of ways. “I just wanted to say hello,” Caleb says. “Ask how everything was. Catch up, Tallboy. You never call me anymore. Have you replaced me or what?”

“Garden’s good,” Ben says---dodges in a way he never would have before everything. Caleb takes it in stride, because that’s what everyone does, laughing with a well timed, “is the garden the only action you’ve gotten in the past year, Tallboy, really? For shame.”

They chat for an indeterminable amount of time, because chatting with Caleb is one of those endless things that can last for hours or minutes and either way makes you come away feeling better.  He tells Ben about the rowing team, about the school, about how Abe is doing now that he’s finally moved to the high school and he and Caleb have a lunch together because the marine bio classes and the earth science classes happen to run on the same track. He tells Ben about Marie, the girl who purposely tipped her boat into Congers Lake yesterday. He talks about Mary, and how big little Thomas is getting, and the state of the house, and how boring paperwork is. It’s mundane, but from Caleb’s mouth everything sounds like an adventure.

Ben listens and doesn’t speak. Everyone seems to wordlessly understand his quiet isn’t lack of interest, it’s just lack of words. They know Ben’s talked enough for a lifetime (that he wasn’t expecting to talk again in the first place).

“Look after Anna, eh, Tallboy?” Caleb says, the same thing he always says when he wants to wrap up the conversation, and Ben hums, smiling again.

“Sure thing.”

They say their goodbyes, and Ben smiles against the vacuum in his chest as he puts down his phone and scrubs at the too-clean dishes. His hands shake as he goes out to the garden, finally gets around to planting garlic and winter lettuce and spinach. The strawberries are long dead, but the carrots are still good, and he tends to them best as he can, packing the mulch more securely around them so they’re insulated from the cold.

When he comes back in, there’s a glass of water waiting on the kitchen counter for him, a note in Anna’s tidy scrawl pinned under it.

 

_Went for groceries! be back soon._

 

He drinks his glass, takes a shower, changes, and crawls into bed at two o’clock in the afternoon. Anna doesn’t call him on it.

She never does.

 

**X**

 

 

Ben wakes with the sun, because usually the nightmares don’t let him sleep past it.

The strange thing about them is that they’re never actually memories of what happened. Bits and pieces of dialogue are taken from each, morphed into a horrible hybrid of phrases--- _good work_ turns itself inside out, a parody of itself, _I own you_ \--- and in the ones where his name is said Ben can’t bear to hear it in his waking hours. He can’t speak most days, not past the ring around his throat made by bruises in the shape of fingers, but it’s especially hard on those days where he hears the echoing purr of _Benjamin, Benjamin,_ scolded like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. On those days, it’s hard to keep the two halves of his brain separate---the logical part that says _it was abuse and it was utterly inappropriate; it’s normal to be having reactions about it_ and the irrational one that whispers _but you weren’t dating, it was just at work, so was it really? Stop being so dramatic, Benjamin._

It’s difficult to be honest and say which one wins out most days, but he’s quiet for a reason.

October has flown into November, and the leaves are brittle, half fallen from the trees. The carrots are sweeter, and many carrot themed dishes suddenly pop up on the _Tall & Strong _ menu. Their guests go wild for it, and whenever Anna gets a moment she can be found in the kitchen sampling more carrot recipes. Ben eats six different carrot cakes in a week, and then tries seven different glazed recipes in the next two. (Brown sugar cinnamon with lemon juice turns out to be his favorite, something he doesn’t tell Anna but he’s completely and utterly sure she notes for Thanksgiving).

November rolls on by the same way the other months do (they finally turn on the central heating system, having previously been relying on the old radiators in the guestrooms to keep them warm, but at this point sitting in the dining room for any extended period of time makes fingers and noses go numb). Ben tends to the garden, Anna makes herself cups of coffee, the guests come and go. They have an influx of tourists who want to squeeze in their trip before buildings begin closing for maintenance, but apart from that it’s sleepy and peaceful and healing in a way that summer never can quite encompass. In sweaters every day, trying a plethora of new dishes, raking dead leaves from the yard and the driveway and the parking lot, Ben finds a peace he hasn’t been able to until now.

They don’t close for Thanksgiving, and it’s surprising that they have three guests (travelers passing through rather than real tourists, but guests nonetheless). They’re young and vibrant and full of stories about their road trip, and don’t stop gushing over the dishes that Anna’s made (she only preens when they fawn over her turkey, but that’s fair considering she spent six hours in a state of snappish anxiety over it). The carrots are abundant---as predicted, the glazed carrots are brown sugar cinnamon soaked in lemon juice---and Ben made the stuffing utterly from scratch. When Lemuel, Sam, and Alexander learn this, they turn their awe to him, and though he’s never been one for praises he’s endeared by their earnestness. They’re soaked in it like the battered recognize in the erstwhile battered.

“So how long have you guys been married?” Sam asks, tactless in the way teenagers are, and Anna seizes up beside him.

“We’re not,” Ben says, deceptively mild, and Sam seems to realize he’s stepped on a sore spot (Lem and Alexander are not so subtly kicking his shins under the table, though Ben’s sure they think they’re the picture of secrecy) and Sam backtracks like a pro. If that pro were specializing in being a bull in a china shop.

“Ah, gotcha, sorry, my bad,” he babbles. “I’m like totally into the whole best-friends-running-a-business thing so yeah that’s like totally lit you know? Totally the best, love that, one day I wanna run like an auto-repair shop with some friends and that’s like totally the same thing so like yeah I really, really dig this, Ms. Anna, Mr. Ben, that’s lit.” Lem and Alexander both look like they’re resisting facepalming, but Anna is slowly relaxing beside Ben, so he counts it as a win.

Lemuel, the most perceptive of the three, takes a frantic bite of his mashed potatoes and moans a little too obscenely. “ _Oh my goshhhhh,_ Ms. Anna! The garlic is _deliciooooouuuus!”_

It’s not a good recovery, at all, but Anna comes back with a snort of laughter and the table relaxes. Truth be told, the whole thing is rather charming.

At the end of the night, full of glazed carrots, good stories, and better company, Ben retires with sleepy eyes and the heavy feeling of contentment in his chest. He doesn’t wake early enough to catch Lemuel, Sam, and Alexander on their way out, but when he shuffles to the coffee machine, there’s a note addressed to him.

 

 _Thanks for everything! loved the stuffing! You guys are the best!_ it reads, in only the way a note written by college students can. _call us when you can! can we thanksgiving next year w u guys? -Alex, Lem, Sam._ A phone number follows.

 

Ben carefully tucks the note away for safekeeping, and doesn’t speak around the lump in his throat---the first not made by finger marks in months.

He makes himself an omelet, and Anna excuses herself.

Maybe they both feel the ache.

 

**X**

 

 

December heeds the true lateness of the rising sun, and Ben wakes well before it’s up.

His body aches like it wants more sleep because it’s dark, but his mind refuses to rest again, so he finds himself stumbling out of bed in the dark of six o’clock most days.

Anna isn’t up yet---a rarity---so he makes breakfast. They have a pair of guests (a couple on their honeymoon, though Ben can’t fathom why they’d come to a Colonial Williamsburg partially shut down for the winter) who are vegan, so Ben makes an out of season breakfast burrito with rice, hash browns, onions, and avocado slaw. It takes half an hour and all of Ben’s cooking skills, but the couple is overjoyed by it, so it’s worth it.

Eight o’clock passes. Anna still hasn’t come down.

It’s a bad day, then, Ben decides, and begins making a pancake almost without thinking. He puts up a pot of coffee for her, absently grabs the oranges they’d shoved in the refrigerator and begins squeezing. He flips the pancake, burns his thumb, gets juice in his eye when he can’t grip the orange properly again, and knocks the coffee mug over (without the coffee in it, thankfully) but he gets the job done.

He’s debating bringing it up to her when she finally comes shambling down the stairs in her robe and her slippers. He wordlessly puts it in front of her, prepares her coffee the way she likes it, puts the orange juice in front of her. She smiles at him. It’s a thin, brittle thing, framed by the paleness of her face and the bags beneath her eyes.

She doesn’t speak, but Ben knows all about that, so he doesn’t hold it against her.

He looks after Anna. He takes on the guests---checks them out when they leave two days later. Anna doesn’t come downstairs to watch them go---not like she watched Alexander, Lem, and Sam.

He kicks the heat up a little higher because it’s finally chilly enough to warrant the increase in their bill (Anna shivers terribly, and though Ben knows it’s not from the cold he can’t help but try, he just---needs to try). He takes her food when she can’t get out of bed, and clears it away. He handles the dishes, and the garden, and the dusting. They get another guest (a rough and tumble biker who looks hilariously out of place in their old timey inn) but apart from that, things are uneventful.

He does laundry, and pays the bills, and generally functions. When a week has finally passed and she hasn’t done it herself, he goes upstairs and draws a bath and coaxes Anna from bed. He sits outside the bathroom in case she needs him, but he doesn’t end up helping her.

When she emerges, she’s wearing one of Ben’s old Yale shirts, soft and worn and too big for her. She looks at him as he stands, and he looks down at her, a full head taller. Anna is older than him---goes to lengths to make that clear. She looks at him now like she’s lost at sea and he’s the only buoy she can find.

He takes her hand and guides her back into her bedroom; changes the sheets and lets her climb in before he’s done replacing them so that they fall around her. Her shoulders hitch, the only thing he can see because she’s turned away from him.

He changes into his pajamas and does exactly what she had when he had first come to her: he shuts off the lights, crawls in beside her, and holds her as she cries.

“It’s my fault he left,” she whimpers, hoarse from not speaking. “I didn’t give him what he wanted.”

He presses his cheek to the top of her head. Her ear is against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. “No it’s not,” Ben says finally. “He asked---he wanted the impossible.”

“I miss him,” she hiccups, more miserable than he’s ever heard her. “I _hate_ that I miss him. I don’t want to miss him. _I hate that I miss him.”_

He hears what she’s actually saying, because he thinks it himself. It’s why he can’t speak, and why she only makes her own coffee.

He lets her cry herself out, shielding her best he can with what he has. He’s not mighty, but he has limbs he’d gladly lose for her, and a life he’d gladly give. He knows it isn’t enough, but it’s everything he’s got.

He searches for words, the last thing he owns, to give her.

“Sometimes…” he grapples. “Your body’s borders recognize someone only because of how---only because of how long it was. It’s not---it’s not longing, just… just knowing. It doesn’t mean that it’ll be like---that it’ll---it won’t be this way forever.”

She hiccups again. “It’s a bad day,” she burbles to him, and he laughs. It’s full of wetness.

“That’s okay,” he croaks. “Happens to the best of us.”

 

 

**X**

 

They go home for Christmas.

They almost don’t; Anna is still pale, still drawn, and Ben is anxious about driving.  Still, they brave it; listen to _the Lord of the Rings_ audiobook to distract themselves (once, they would have sang to Blue Swede and the Pina Colada Song and Meatloaf, but that time is past them and Ben isn’t wholly sure if he’ll ever get it back). They don’t even get to Rivendell before they make it to the Woodhulls’, and Abe throws his arms around Ben with a fervor Ben has seldom felt, clinging to him with surprising desperation. Ben, for his part, can’t help but cling back.

It’s reminiscent of Thanksgiving, but in an old, well worn way. They’ve done Christmas together for years (there are new additions---Robert and his father, a younger boy named Ensign (“ _Please_ call me Baker, I don’t know what my parents were thinking”) who reminds Ben of Lemuel, a handful of others) but the core of them is still there---Abe, Caleb, Ben, Anna.

They chat, and laugh, and swap stories. Caleb talks about the rowing team; Abe about his earth science class. They watch as Thomas throws his applesauce and it lands in Baker’s lap. There’s more than enough talk to make up for Ben’s silence and Anna’s quietness, and they sit comfortably and soak up what their friends willingly offer them.

After dinner, Anna is sucked into a conversation with Baker and a man named Edmund and Ben is pulled into the sitting room by Abe.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Abe says without preamble---appealing in only a way Abe can pull off. “Things have been rocky and we haven’t really talked much. My fault, obviously, I shouldn’t have gotten so absorbed in Sprout and the position change; Caleb said he told you about that, huh? But I just…”

“We’re, uh, we’re good,” Ben says, nodding. “All good. Thanks, Abe.”  
  
Abe stares at him, and when he speaks, his voice is the just the right amount of gentle, the right amount of unyielding. “How are you, Ben.”

He doesn’t know why this, of all things, is the thing that breaks him, but it is. Tears spring to his eyes, and it takes all his willpower to not let them fall. “I’m---I’m okay,” he wobbles, blinking rapidly, Abe’s face too kind and too firm all at once. “I’m o-okay.”

Abe just looks at him.

Ben sniffs, tries to get himself under control. The night has been nice; the house is warm, homey, decorated beautifully. It’s full of nice people, nice food, nice… everything. He doesn’t know why he’s upset. He really doesn’t.

He stands there, and tears fall, and Abe just stays as a witness, because somehow he understands that crying isn’t a release unless it’s in front of someone else. Ben hiccups, “we’ve tried to b-b---it’s been a little hard.”

To his credit, Abe says nothing. He only offers Ben a tissue and pushes him down to the couch and sits beside him, pressing them together from shoulder to hip in a show of solidarity. For once, it feels like someone is actually listening to him and speaking his language, and it makes Ben cry further.

He isn’t sure if it’s out of relief or out of pain.

Abe remains a sturdy presence at his side, solid and resolute.

And Ben is so, so glad he came home for Christmas.

 

 **X**  

 

 

They pack the car with leftovers after their three days imposing on Abe’s hospitality. Mary and Anna share a hug, and it’s Ben who throws himself at Abe this time. They cling to one another harder than they had three days ago, and Abe turns his head so his lips are brushing the shell of Ben’s ear as he whispers, “remember, Ben. I’m here for you. You call, I’ll be there.”

Both their eyes are a little wet when they finally break away and smile at each other, but that can’t be helped.

They bid everyone else goodbye. Anna lingers around Hewlett, but she doesn’t look at him with anything but friendly acquaintance.

They get in the car; Ben’s in the passenger seat this time. Anna turns the key, adjusts the mirrors, adjusts the heat. She looks more awake than she has in a long time.

They sit in silence in Abe’s driveway, not moving. Everyone’s already gone inside, and the world is quiet and still around them, snow on the ground, the sky darkening already. Anna takes a mighty breath.

“Let’s go,” she decides, and pushes the gear into reverse.

They listen to _Lord of the Rings_ on the way back, but Ben wonders if maybe Anna wants to listen to Meatloaf as much as he does.

 

**X**

 

 

Deep winter is when tourism slows down completely, and January and February pass like molasses. In the quiet, Ben’s nightmares return with a vengeance, and it’s after the second week of them that Anna just begins climbing into bed with him at night. He doesn’t say anything, because this is bordering on _too domestic_ , but when he wakes one morning clinging to her, she lets him. His dreams are always the same blurry half-truths they’ve always been: being shoved, backed into corners, breath close to his ear _now now, Benjamin._ In his dreams, Scott threatens to do things he never would have in life---not even per a threat, because even he knew where the line was regarding such things. Still, still----

 _Now now, Benjamin,_ Scott scolds, and presses him into the wall, _you don’t know anything about running this company. Who are you to tell your boss what he can and can’t do?_ Closer, hissing, grabbing a wrist so hard it creaks. _I could do_ **_anything I wanted._**

He sits up and opens his mouth and screams and fights with his blankets because his body doesn’t recognize it’s blankets and not another body and Anna hushes him and holds him as he cries and cries and cries.

“It’s not real, it’s not real, Ben,” she attempts to soothe, but he sobs and sobs because it was, it was, it happened, Scott did that to him, Scott _did_ this to him, this is _Scott’s fault,_  Scott grabbed him and knocked him around and interrupted him and _made him feel this way_ made him feel weak and helpless and it was awful _it was so awful_ **_Scott did this to him_** and Ben is so angry _Ben is so angry_ because _Scott_ **_broke_ ** _him_ \---

 _“He did this to me!”_   Ben howls to an empty house, all the pent up words he never said and should have said and **_why didn’t he say_** **_them---_** "he did this to me and he **_didn’t even care!_** _He broke me and he_ ** _DOESN’T EVEN CARE!”_**

Anna trembles from the raised voice, but Ben hurts so badly that he can’t stop himself, there’s a hurricane inside him and he knows he’s destroying her because this scares her; being in a bed with someone else scares her and pressing against someone scares her and making someone else’s coffee scares her and _he knows why_ because it’s the same reason _he can’t talk_ it’s because they were both **_owned---_ **

“Body’s borders, Ben,” Anna whispers to the top of his quivering head, her voice wobbling. “Body’s borders.”

 

**X**

 

 

February is rough.

There’s a panic attack every night that he wrestles with to lie in bed. Head to pillow. He’s so exhausted by the end of it he aches to sleep, but his body knows he shouldn’t. It feels like Scott’s hand is around his neck again, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. He doesn’t have another nightmare like that one, but he’s terrified he might. He’s frantic. He’s so scared he can’t scream.

Anna stays with him.

Ben doesn’t know why, and doesn’t ask. He can’t talk, and she doesn’t make him.

He’s so scared he can’t scream.

But Anna is there beside him, and Abe answers every time Ben calls, and Caleb talks and talks and talks and fills all the silences Ben can't.

 

**X**

 

 

Ben rises with the sun, because the nightmares have finally tapered off.

He goes about his morning routine. It’s boring, and he needs that. March has rolled around, and Williamsburg has opened again, and the cold has ebbed away finally. The sun’s begun coming up at six o’clock again.

He takes a deep breath, goes downstairs. Anna’s in the kitchen making breakfast for their guests, and he skips coffee, takes a deep breath, and goes out into the garden.

He’s neglected it these past months; he’s lost weight, but he doesn’t think it’s from not eating. He touches the ground and scoops the mulch away and there are carrots waiting. The strawberries won’t bloom until late April or May, depending on how warm it is. The basil is just beginning to sprout. He tends to the plants, even the dead ones---especially the dead ones. He's gentle with them in a way he's still learning to be gentle with himself. The sun is warm.

In its light, he feels less pale. Less sickly than the winter months have made him out to be.

When he goes inside, Anna’s made him an omelet. Though it’s been a month and a half of omelets for breakfast, this one is the only one that doesn’t taste like ash. 

“Gonna spill the beans, Ben?” She asks quietly. “Or am I gonna have to wait until after coffee?”

The omelet isn't coffee. She hasn't made him coffee, because that's not in her, yet. They haven't talked about anything between them---she doesn't know the details of what happened, only what occurred. She doesn't know how he felt when it all went down just like he doesn't know how she felt when things between her and Selah went up in smoke. The omelet isn't coffee.

But it's a start.

She sits across from him at the counter, waiting. Their guests are out for the day; an elderly couple and a family of four. Out enjoying the warmth of Colonial Williamsburg.

Anna has always been good at knowing what he needs. She knows when to push and when to let him be, when to pry and when to let it go. There’s very little he isn’t willing to tell her in time---to date, she knows all his secrets and could likely guess the thoughts running through his head as they happen---but some things get stuck in his throat, get lodged there in a way only working with his hands and focusing too hard on a task can budge.

 But there are no dishes to be done, and the garden isn't quite ready to work in yet. There's only him, and Anna, and the things they share between them---the house, the guests, the chores. The garden.

 

And it’s here, in this fickle peace, that he opens his mouth.

 

 

 


End file.
